🔊“While you reap what you sow, how your seeds gon' live?”
Artwork by Vinny Romanelli / www.dreamscollide.com/vinny-romanelli
Why Holy Hand Grenades again?
Since it is said that the pen is mightier than the sword, this is a personal practice - to play with typing fingers for more fruitful labours. If some people default to being triggered or outraged by newsfeeds from numerous pokers and provocateurs, how might one more conscientiously confront these multi-phrenia of opinions?
Instead of boorishly bifurcated this or that perspectives, could these observations be considered as probes instead? I yearned to elevate fruitless disputes towards more growth mindset common grounds. From ‘what fresh hell is this?!’ into well, sacred revelations and insightful hmmms.
To invoke benign energies, the pome granate (seedy apple) seemed ripe for the borrowing. According to Taschen’s Book of Symbols: “the pomegranate suggests, in a psychological sense, the bitter depths and majestic forces of the unconscious encountered in the taking in of fertile, dreadful seeds of the self.”
This is also a creative exercise. For every issue, I hope to feature a new rendition of the HHG logo made by friends. Their artworks/prints can be purchased too if you wish.
Studying and sprouting seedlings
I’ve been silent for a year, mainly due to being in the classroom at KSA, and despite the lack of reporting, I went on many field trips, enjoying last summer with people.
The Realisation Festival was a chance to dig deeper into this #metamodernism label (It’s ok, most people are still befuddled by this term). I also made new friends, such as this Canadian musician Joel Plaskett - who introduced me to the Swedenborg Foundation. We exchanged books and I am loving reading the Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey Into Christian Hermeticism
Many sunny days were gloriously spent at the beach in Bournemouth, scheming the Revenge of the Humanities™ with Timo Peach. We sketched lots of plans, some of which led to the recording of this Unsee The Future: Hopeychattybits
x75 freshers (first years) were wrangled to experiment with creating a printed reading artefact via Newspaper Club (as pictured). Most of the students were not familiar with who David Bowie and Prince were, so am rather pleased to have been a messenger for their cultural legacies.
I continue to co-host the CARDSTOCK Monthly Meetup which is online. I have developed my own card deck, which will be called The Rogue Re-Up.
Join us on 24th March for the next deal. As a teaser, I share this ACE:
“Purity of Heart, is to Will One Thing” - Sören KierkegaardThe Medium Is The Message? I was granted a scholarship for one of the best online courses ever - an intensive and proper book club that deconstructs the seminal Marshall McLuhan’s Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964). Led by Andrew McLuhan of the McLuhan Institute, Part 3 starts 23rd March 2023 - make sure to BOOK ASAP + tell others about it, especially if they claim to be experts of communications & technology.
Yes, this class changed my life and I am aghast that it wasn’t key source in my BA/MA bibliographies. Here’s an example of homework from the course that I answered and submitted:
“With the arrival of TV and its iconic mosaic image,
the everyday life situations begin to seem very square, indeed.”
The challenge: how would you explain this sentence to someone
who hasn’t read Understanding Media or Marshall McLuhan’s work?
What The Fresh Next?!
I’m looking for mentors, funders, collaborators, designers, rebels… and the cause is this thing called ROGUE FUTURES INITIATIVES. We haven’t got a website yet, but we have many plans, and I’ll be writing more about this project with greater fervour and frequency.
What is it? - A live 2-hour educational talk-show with an interactive audience, which demonstrates the systems design thinking and methodology of Rogue Futures Initiatives. The show also exists online as a special broadcast series via YouTube/Spotify.
Who are you/we? - A collective of individual creative experts & generalists that trains leadership teams strategic world building and futures thinking skills. The group promotes perception training with cultural literacy and media ecology as pathways for integrating business imperatives within the creative industries.
» Please get in touch if you’re curious… You can also meet us in person on 23 April 2023 in Bournemouth, where Timo will deliver his Unsee The Future talk: “The planet is f*cked. So what?”
Hi, I’m Rina. I teach a History & Context module for art students at Kingston University and I’m also a polymath problem solver for hire. I enjoy untangling situations by synthesising the strategic with the scholarly and sacrilegiously spiritual. [Here is my LinkTree, and I’m on instagram as @rinabelle]